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Advent Calendar 2014

1:23 PM

December is here, and with it, another edition of my traditional Advent calendar. I posted a teaser earlier last month, showing 24 little paper cups that I painted in copper and gold.
I have now completed the project and the first little present got opened this morning. I initially thought of making little handles out of wire and turn these cups into mini buckets all tied to a string. but then I remembered that push pins do not exactly go easy in these walls, and the weight of the finished calendar could easily pull them out. There was no way I would hunt down a handyman to put two holes in either.

So I put on my thinking cap, and came up with the idea of gluing the cups to strips of sturdy craft paper and tape said strips to the wall :

Before I came to that gluing part though, I decorated each cup with a strip of washi tape, and wrote a number with....what else...glitter 3D glue (yes I know I use it a lot, and no no no I won't sign up for glitter glue anonymous). Once that was done, the cups were ready to be glued to the strips of papers.
I decided to stick to candies and chocolate for this year's presents, and I wrapped them in 24 little bundles and put on inside each cup late last night...after remembering that...crap November was in its last few hours. Seriously, where does the time fly?

And of course because the strips of paper alone looked a bit blah once on the wall, I felt the need to cut out Christmassy shapes out of the Christmas themed craft paper I already used for the wreath. And it goes without saying that I once more took my collection of glitter glue out (seriously Pidilite, I could be the brand ambassador for these...think about it).

In the course of last week I got involved in quite a few Holiday themed projects. and, there is probably more to come, if you didn't know it already (and I am sure you did), I am big on Christmas, this is the only holiday from back home I do celebrate, and the one I really don't want to see dying, hence the madness that goes every year offline, and on this blog.

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Advent calendars are a German and Scandinavian tradition more than anything else, they count down the days until Christmas. Whether it is Cjristian, or was a pagan tradition before Christianity took over the the solstice celebration is not known to me, but there are many different types of them. The simplest are usually a card with little doors, you open a door a day and a picture inside is revealed, some more elaborate cards have a chocolate behind the door. And bigger ones do involve doors but little presents, and trinkets. Most calendars I know of and grew up with are completely secular in nature, but I heard there are some Christian themed ones as well, that involve having a bible verse printed on each 24 strips, or a Christian good deed to do for the day.In Countries where German culture is present, we also count the 4 Sundays before Christmas, they are referred to as the 4 Advent Sundays, usually the famous Christmas markets which have been present since the middle age in Europe, start on the first Advent. In Households, the 4 adverts are marked by a table wreath topped with 4 candles, and you light one candle for each advent, so the first Sunday night you light one, then the next you light two, until the last Su day before Cjristmas when you light all 4 of them. That tradition I don't do here, the ceiling fans are still on, so the candles won't stay lit :-) The Advent is a kind of anticipation period before Christmas, for secular people it is the time to get the spirit going, for religious people that is a time of reflexion that leads to the celebration of Jesus birthday.

Wow! That copper and gold paint makes them look very pretty. Good idea!I can't help but laugh out loud with your obsession of that 3D glitter glue. Because I can totally relate to it. When I was a kid camel or camlin used to sell them in the name of sparkles. Each box would contain around 5 different color tubes. But VERY expensive so much that out of 60 girls only three or four girls in my class could afford them belonging to uber rich families. We used to do a group project and that glitter glue would be used sparingly even by those 3 girls just to write our group's name.!!! It was that expensive. For us middle class ppl owning a good quality fountain or pilot pen was a luxury. But the economy of India was different then. Now even a low middle class person can afford those sparkle tubes. The funny thing is when my parents actually bought them when they could i was a little older and had no idea what to do with them. But my sister generously used them on greeting cards and finished the lot of five tubes. I still have one of those used up golden tubes. I couldn't just bear to throw it away. :-) Even to this day I want to buy them when I go to the stationery but I know after a while they will dry up and make its way to the dust bin since I'm not into arts or crafts.

I don't remember having that glue as a kid myself, maybe because my mom kept all the messy stuff off limit, no idea. But I do remember the glitter powder, we used it on occasion in school, we have to draw the pattern with white glue and sprinkle a generous amount of glitter on it and let it dry, then we would shake the paper and all the loose glitter would fall, it was really messy, and usually you would find glitter stuck in carpets, hair, and skin for days after completing the project. Glitter glue makes it so much easier :-)

I wonder have you done anything art inspired by Hindu mythology may be mahabharata or ramayana. There are ofcourse beatiful pictures and sculptures of Hindu gods everywhere enough to inspire you to create something beatiful.

No I haven't, and I won't go on that ground, I consider religion and mythology sacred enough not to interpret it in my artistic creation when they aren't from my own cultural background, out of respect for those who are part of said culture :-)

Oh, you just got to read a few books, see a few pictures. Calender art is mostly the standard for drawing Hindu gods. One good thing about hindu gods is that everyone pretty much knows how they look and what they wear, religious serials have also given a face to most of our gods. We tend to think about the actor when thinking about Krishna or Shiva. Ganesha is drawn in all sorts of ways. Pretty much everything worth drawing has been drawn.

There are certain incidents in mythology which are quiet drawable for eg. the ten incarnations of Lord Vishnu, each different from the other:-

http://www.ruchiskitchen.com/vishnu-dasha-avatar/

Or the episode of Sagar Mantha (churning of the ocea), which I think has been drawn the most:-

ramayana and mahabharata are slighty tricky, you have to be well versed with the story, but certain incidents from mythology are more easy to draw. No offence, meant If find mythological pictures if all religions very interesting.

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